Carrier
by Masamune Reforged
Summary: Heero is dying from AIDS and Duo cannot help but feel responsible. 1x2, deathfic


Carrier-A GW fanfic-by Masamune

Disclaimer: IF I did own Gundam Wing then there'd be many more episodes of it and lots more blatant yaoi. But I obviously don't own it or any of the characters. They all belong to Sunrise, Sotsu Agency, Bandai etc… but they don't belong to me. I just write about them

Please send feedback to [MasamuneEHS@hotmail.com][1]

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Ever wanted to pitch yourself through a window? 

Or just maybe tie a little noose, like in all those old movies, and hang yourself in your bedroom?

I'm not normally this suicidal, nor this depressed. But right now the view from the hospital window creates a very inviting picture of a crowded street, some 18 stories below, calling my name.

"You're a pestilence to the world," It seems to moan, "You kill everything you touch."

And everything I care for…Yeah that's me. Duo Maxwell. The living hand of Death, Shinigami, mass murderer, carrier. 

I've got quite an arsenal of names. But I've got one simple function, to bring death to anything and everyone. Kill everything…

Back in the day (sounds like I'm 80) I was 02, a nameless marvel that brought justice to a chaotic universe. A brave knight whose steed wielded a marvelously destructive scythe. But that was little more then 7 years ago. Seven years of happiness and joy, unlike anything I've ever had in my life. 

…Get to the point? Yeah I babble way too much, everyone I've ever met has told me that. Well how about this? My name's Duo Maxwell, I'm now 24 years old, I live in a small apartment on G-1024. I own a small salvage place on L2 that's probably a pile of junk now (like it wasn't before). I run a small mechanic service here on G-1024. And I have the AIDS virus.

Am I one of those stinking bastard queers that started and spread that terrible plague? Yes I'm homosexual but I got the virus from my mother. I found out that's why I was an orphan. I don't know what AIDS means to the rest of the world. As far as I'm concerned the world can quite frankly go and fuck itself. That's what's happening anyway. 

So then why do I feel so bad about all the stuff I did during the war? Because even with all the evil in the world I'm one of the most evil things. I'm no innocent pretty boy, although even at 24 cops still check my ID when I drive through town. I'm the bringer of Death, a living plague. 

What will people say about me when I die? What was my greatest accomplishment? Killing hundreds, maybe thousands of soldiers and bringing peace to the universe? No that was easy enough. I'm a highly skilled pilot and in something as unstoppable as a Gundam I might as well be fighting a swarm of chinchillas. No, my greatest kill of them all is Heero Yuy.

Well not yet…but soon. Doctors say it's a miracle that he's hung on this long. I should have noticed earlier. His failing health this past two years. A powerful cold or fever, all too frequent. He never went to a physician. Why would he? If a hundred Leos, Zechs Merquise and a self-destruction blast couldn't kill him what could?

Me. The one thing he loved. 

Since he was hospitalized and the doctors told him what it was I know he's been silently cursing himself. His training's always told him not to open up to anything. No friends, no loved ones, only the mission. The one thing that he opened up to and loved turned around and bit him. And so Heero Yuy, Wing Zero pilot, savior of the universe and Perfect Soldier is laying in a hospital bed dying from pneumonia. 

Nearby Wufei sits, not really watching me but just keeping an eye on me. He never approved of my relationship with Heero, probably because he was raised in such a traditional group. He even said to my face once that he thought I should give up my Gundam and quit the war because I was too much of a distraction for Heero. He probably wants to say something to me right now. I hate "I told ya so"s, 

One more person that Shinigami's dragged to the grave. One more for the body harvest that I've collected around me my whole life. It shouldn't matter to me, I shouldn't be upset at myself, at life, at God. Whatever I blame I really should have expected this. 

The one thing in my life that's brought me joy, I should have known that it wasn't to stay. Mirages of happiness and my own hope for peace and quiet and love blinded me. We were doing a gunfight scene from a play, but my gun was loaded to kill. All became blackness and I shot in the dark. My aim wasn't deadly, but the ricochet was.

Oh, and I should mention this too. I'll never die from HIV. The same killer that snipered the Perfect Soldier can't even make this braided baka sneeze. I'm asymptomatic. I live with the virus my whole life. Hurray.

I got the call this morning, Trowa had been watching him. It didn't matter that it was 4 in the morning, I was still awake. I can't sleep at night anymore, not in a lonely bed for two. When it rang all I thought was that Heero was dead and I'd never be able to say goodbye. I cursed myself for ever letting Quatre and the doctors convince me that I needed to go home and rest. I wanted to do the toaster in the bathtub bit, like in the movies, and be able to leave the world with you. But instead I just answered the phone.

"Hello," my voice is cracked, and scared. I don't want you to be gone already, I don't want to have to think the rest of my life what I could have said or what I could have done in those last few minutes that he was alive and I wasn't with him. But of course he was alive.

"Duo, come to the hospital quick, Heero's not doing well," Trowa's voice crackles through his cell phone, almost as flat and dead as ever, almost. 

"What do the doctors say?" I ask. What does it matter though? The doctors say an hour and he dies in 10 minutes. The doctors say a million years and his life goes out just when I pull into the parking lot. 

"…They don't think he'll make it through the next five minutes." 5 minutes? 5 minutes, 5 minutes. "But personally I give him almost an hour…if he's strong," Voice as cool as ice, sometimes I didn't wonder if Trowa and Heero were from the same batch.

"I'll be there soon." I hang up the phone, not waiting for a response. Jump in the car, tear ass down the empty desolate streets. I could hit some drunk or some late night cabby but I speed through the red lights regardless. Nothing matter's now, only getting there in time.

The night scene blurs by me, some old houses, some abandoned, some filled with happy families. All is quiet. All is dark. The roads filled with litter and debris, a homeless man is the only sign of human existence tonight. Ever think about it? To that one man all I am is another quick wind that chills his old bones. To him there is only his misery and pain, his hunger and his cold, shivering body. There is at least one thing for everybody and for some more then eight. But to me there is only Heero. 

And how does that bring me here, two days later?

Today I awoke (Trowa and Quatre convinced me to take some heavy duty sleeping pills) and when I got up I shivered and turned the heat up and still shivered. And in the back of my mind, in the back of my head I knew, just as I knew that when I returned with the mobile suit Maxwell Church and all I loved were gone. In the back of my head ad through my entire being I knew it. Today was it.

Doctors and nurses finally make their way out and the head one comes over to me. Can't remember his name for the life of me.

"I'm sorry son," he drawls slowly. "We've done everything we can, at this point it's all up to him."

I nod and thank the man for all he and his staff's done for Heero. Nothing can stop Death though, no matter how valiant an effort you put up. Hope and faith in God are such gimmicks put up by people too scared of death. And in the battles all will fall that use them as their shield, they will be massacred by the unstoppable and inevitable final sleep that is death.

I walk up slowly to the door, it seems like millennia since I last saw him, less then a few hours ago. I enter and the smell of medicine and that acrid stench, much too similar to that of decay, which seems to haunt all medical facilities, reaches me and makes me scrunch my nose. Try not to breathe in and it won't be there. Tubes and machines and a TV. There's also one window falling onto the busy scenery of streets below, millions passing, always oblivious. 

In my relatively short life I've seen heart wrenching scenes in many different forms. Poverty, deceit, abuse, injustice, and my personal number one, Death, have always been parts of my life, parts of my existence. And the pain that lingers and the suffering brought on by these sights and experiences all pale in contrast to what I feel right now, staring at the near lifeless body of Heero Yuy.

He's laying under a thin green hospital blanket. His loose, white patient's robe is a stark contrast to his usual tight jeans and oh-too-sexy spandex. His hair is thin and shaggy, falling chaotically over his face. He looks so weak now that the tears refuse to stay down. No matter how hard I try to keep them down they surge and mass together in the wells of my eyes. Why do I cry now? Not because of this miserable sight of a man which is a ghost of the shell of the Heero Yuy of old, a man I loved, a man I still love. 

No, it's not his depressing condition that rolls the first betraying tear down my cheek. It's the fact that this is going to be the last time I'll ever see him alive, ever see that sparkle in his eyes, ever be with him while his chest rises and falls and his heart beats on. In death all stops. All emotions, all things physical stop when confronted by death. They are swallowed up by death and afterwards, there is only death.

So I do what I've done for the past month now. I shut the door, take a seat by his bed and look into his eyes. No talking, no communication other then our eyes locking and searching. It's ironic for me to say this but it's true that words aren't necessary to communicate.

"I'm sorry Heero," I finally sob out, tears beginning to fall freely. "I never wanted this for you, I only wanted to make you happy. I never wanted you…" The last two words get lodged in my throat, they won't come out, they don't want to accept that I'm the reason that his life is now ending. "I never wanted you to die Heero," I finally blubber out, losing more and more the control of myself that I've always been so proud of. "I only wanted to make you happy."

"You have Duo."

His response is less then a whisper. I feel his hand cover mine and give a weak squeeze. I look into his Prussian eyes and through the blur of my tears I can make out his message to me. He coughs violently and the fit brings me pain as well as I watch, helpless, as it racks through his body, finally leaving him drained and weak.

"Before you came into my life I had nothing. I was nothing. You're the best thing that's ever happened to me Duo Maxwell, and I love you. I don't just love you for what you've done for me; I love you for who you are. And I'll never stop loving you. My love for you will be forever, it will go on for infinity, through anything and everything."

I sob and wipe away the falling tears. I look into his eyes and I can't help but wonder what good this world will be without him. I need him.

"God Heero I love you," my voice is so weak and shaken, barely it's able to get out of my mouth. "I'll always, always love you. Please Heero, I'm so sorry."

"Shhh," Heero's voice is so soothing even as he wipes away my tears with his shaking hand and places it on my cheek, holding it there. "It's not your fault Duo."

"For all that's happened I think death is a small price to pay," He smiles at me, even as the life begins to flicker and fade from his eyes. His hand stops shaking and begins to fall away from my cheek. "I'm the luckiest person to ever live because I got to known you. I got to know one thing special."

"Ai shiteru, you, my love."

And with that, I'm left alone in the world again. 

The funeral is held soon after, life goes on for the world and for damn near everybody in it. I find myself visiting Heero's grave less and less often lately. Life goes on, he'd want me to go on too. But it wouldn't be that easy, if I didn't think he was still with my, always watching over me, always loving me.

~owari

   [1]: mailto:MasamuneEHS@hotmail.com



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